


you cant break that which isnt yours

by Princex_N



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Angst, Brainweird, Delusions, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Religious Content, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24845458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: If the god Alex prayed to as a child exists, she isn't doing enough, and if Alex has to be the one to do the heavy lifting then he'll do it.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6
Collections: Religiously Themed Delirium





	you cant break that which isnt yours

**Author's Note:**

> title from [Regina Spektor's 'Apres Moi'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtb6Uubj59g)

Alex had been made to die. He's known it since he was a child. 

The problem is that he's just too stubborn to get it done right. 

Humans don't live forever, they all die eventually, but Alex was different from the others, and he'd known it even when he hadn't known that it was strange. It's not unusual to grow up praying in the south, but when Alex was a kid, he used to pray about growing up just to get killed. 

It had been idle, innocent in a way, a passing thought turned into a plan because he had considered the looming threat of adulthood a dull future and not one he'd ever be particularly good at. It had never occurred to him to share that with anyone else, hadn't thought of it as particularly strange at all, up until he'd included a line about it in his script and his professor advised it might be too dark to match the surrounding content. 

Then Alex had been struck with the realization that this probably wasn't as normal as it had felt to him when he was younger. 

He took the line out of the movie and chose not to think about it any more than that. Ignored any of the implications it had for his childhood and development and pretended like they didn't matter, as if none of it had ever happened in the first place, tucked back in the back of his head to ignore when there were bigger things to focus on (and there had _quickly_ been much bigger things to focus on). 

Now he looks back and wonders if it had been a sign, an omen, a signal. A threat of what was to come; god reaching down and hoping that Alex would heed his own childhood dreams and kill himself before he could ever become the plague rat spreading disease throughout crowds of innocent people, before he could become the fool struggling fruitlessly to contain the spreading rot. 

Or maybe it had been a threat instead - the thoughts implanted in his skull with jealous care because Alex is _becoming_ something now, some _thing_ that not even god could hope to contain, and the prayers of a clueless child had been a weak attempt to get rid of him before he could get a chance to change. 

But Alex didn't die when he turned eighteen. He didn't burn in a house fire, didn't get crushed beneath the wheels of a truck, didn't get stabbed in a mugging gone wrong, didn't bleed out with crushed ribs after a bar fight, didn't grow up just to shoot himself in the head. He graduated high school instead, went on to college with a half-written script tucked under his arm and the hot coil of disease hiding beneath his skin. 

If god had wanted Alex dead, she should have killed him herself instead of trying to get Alex to do the dirty work for her. 

He won't do it now either. Spite, or anger, or sheer stubbornness refusing to allow him to be the one to pull the trigger, regardless of how much he wants it sometimes. Alex has had enough of playing the marionette for the eldritch and all-powerful; if something holy wants to pull his strings, he refuses to make it easy for them anymore. He's sick of not having control, of having to find himself underneath the weight of their influences; if they want anything more from him they'll have to pray it out from between his ragged nails themselves. 

No, Alex is beyond the point of killing himself. Beyond the point of allowing god into his head to whisper threats or omens or the prophecies of what could have or _should_ have been. If she'd wanted to keep him human, she should never have let him change. 

He can feel it, under his skin. Something festering and developing in ways it shouldn't have been allowed to, because Alex was _supposed_ to die before it ever got a chance to bloom, and since he hadn't followed the plan that rot was grown in ways it never should have. Growing into something wild and unconstrained, animal and rabid. Holy fire racing unchecked through his veins and sparking flames in his lungs. Alex's anger is _righteous_ now, backed with a cloying divinity and feral in its intensity. Static feedback on camera speakers and unsteady footsteps towards what used to be the monster under his bed. 

(He's sick of it, he loves it, it hurts him, and it's exhilarating. The terror of _becoming._ Alex lays against the dirt at night and feels his heart racing in his chest, feels his lungs straining under the cracking of his bones, feels his eyes shift to make room in his skull. His fingers tighten on the barrel of the gun and he wants to press the muzzle against the side of his head and save himself before he can be ruined anymore, wants to put himself down to save the others from becoming skulls ground between his teeth, but he doesn't. He doesn't, he can't, he's not allowed, he won't let them _make him_.) 

That thing helps to keep him alive for now, for some reason, while its curious, perhaps - interested in seeing how he grows when he never should have in the first place, but Alex doesn't find himself grateful and sure as fuck doesn't consider himself indebted. He's waiting, biding his time while he's busy culling the spread of infection that he had caused without knowing, letting the anger and the animal and the angelic build in his ribcage until _he's_ the one with the upper hand for once. 

Alex won't spare it like it's spared him. He's going to kill it, tear it apart and consume it and make sure that he contains it. If the god Alex had prayed to as a child exists, she isn't doing enough, and if Alex has to be the one to do the heavy lifting then he'll do it. He'll tear the faceless decay to pieces with his chipped fingernails and will grind it with yellowed teeth and let it rot in his stomach until the day he dies and the disease dies with him. 

He doubts it'll take long; doubts it'll agree with him. Doubts that whatever is taking root in his bones will accept that shit into his organs with any grace; two opposing forces foolishly shoved into the same crumbling container. Alex almost hopes it kills him, almost hopes it hurts. Hopes it takes out two ungodly monsters all at once and keeps the world safe from both of them, and nearing 30 isn't anywhere near the 18 Alex used to pray for, but it's better than nothing, and he knows that it's the best he's going to get at this point. Life after this simply won't take him back and he'd refuse it just as solidly if it ever tried to have him. 

There was never going to be an after, a return back to normal, and there never should have been in the first place. Alex's first mistake was not killing himself before he ever got a chance to grow up, his second was not killing himself before he left the tapes behind and went back to college. 

But now? With the steady rot of his lungs in his chest, the growth of divine roots in his intestines, the corruption of his bones, his teeth and nails and voice decomposing with every enraged breath he takes? Alex knows better than to think he'd get another chance. Knows better than to think that anyone would ever take him back like this, as if he was still human, still functioning, still _normal_. As if any person could ever look at him again and not see something holy and terrifying and corroded. 

No, Alex learns from his mistakes, even if it takes him way too long. He's not going to make the same one a third time. 

It's far too late for Alex to die as himself, corrupted by the forces that tried to control him, but when it's time for him to die then it'll be by _his_ choices not theirs. 

(But if god thinks that he'll go down willingly, she's wrong. If Alex has to tear her from the throne and crush her too, he'll do it. Consume her and let her grace burn him from the inside out until there isn't anything left of him; he'll _never_ let himself play the puppet again. He'll make sure of it.) 

**Author's Note:**

> I must go on standing (I'm not my own, it's not my choice)


End file.
